ReconfigBehSci [@SciBeh]. (2021, October 13). transparent public discourse is not easy, nor automatic. We need better tools, better community norms, and, generally, a better understanding of online discourse http://SciBeh.org [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1448305801446105088

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘Now #scibeh2020: Pat Healey from QMU, Univ. Of London speaking about (online) interaction and miscommunication in our session on “Managing Online Research Discourse” https://t.co/Gsr66BRGcJ’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 6 March 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1326155809437446144

Fidalgo, P. (2022, February 22). How the Hell Did It Get This Bad? Timothy Caulfield Battles the Infodemic, March 3 | Center for Inquiry. https://centerforinquiry.org/news/how-the-hell-did-it-get-this-bad-timothy-caulfield-battles-the-infodemic-march-3/

ReconfigBehSci. (2022, January 14). man who contracted potentially disease and then violated public health orders tries to cross borders by providing incorrect info on key docs = just fine is not something I foresaw from this corner... Once consistency is thrown out as a standard, rational debate is impossible... [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1481929150042619908

Garland, J., Ghazi-Zahedi, K., Young, J.-G., Hébert-Dufresne, L., & Galesic, M. (2022). Impact and dynamics of hate and counter speech online. EPJ Data Science, 11(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-021-00314-6

Hallin’s spheres

Hallin divides the world of political discourse into three concentric spheres: consensus, legitimate controversy, and deviance. In the sphere of consensus, journalists assume everyone agrees. The sphere of legitimate controversy includes the standard political debates, and journalists are expected to remain neutral. The sphere of deviance falls outside the bounds of legitimate debate, and journalists can ignore it. These boundaries shift, as public opinion shifts.

I use the metaphor of a compromised immune system to describe the effects of propaganda, the polluted information ecology in which we are swimming.

Ultimately, the cognitive distortions are the disease of modern life, where we can no longer understand ourselves or our world, because the disinformation campaigns have impaired our ability to think rationally when we are in a constant state of stress, anxiety, and fear. We become stuck in the lizard brain, the limbic system, where we make emotional decisions and subsequently justify our actions with rationalizations.

This is the water we swim in.

This is Water by David Foster Wallace

Sanders, J. G., Tosi, A., Obradovic, S., Miligi, I., & Delaney, L. (2021). Lessons from lockdown: Media discourse on the role of behavioural science in the UK COVID-19 response. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647348

Darren Dahly. (2021, February 24). @SciBeh One thought is that we generally don’t ‘press’ strangers or even colleagues in face to face conversations, and when we do, it’s usually perceived as pretty aggressive. Not sure why anyone would expect it to work better on twitter. Https://t.co/r94i22mP9Q [Tweet]. @statsepi. https://twitter.com/statsepi/status/1364482411803906048

Stephan Lewandowsky. (2021, March 6). 25 March deadline for submissions to our ‘special track’ https://t.co/qwLxCCSjks at Data for Policy conference, 14-16 September at UCL. Please consider submitting @SciBeh @stefanmherzog @Sander_vdLinden https://t.co/A8KSC1Tkh9 [Tweet]. @STWorg. https://twitter.com/STWorg/status/1368280722709110789

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved 5 March 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1326159600245223424

Wang, X., Sirianni, A. D., Tang, S., Zheng, Z., & Fu, F. (2020). Public Discourse and Social Network Echo Chambers Driven by Socio-Cognitive Biases. Physical Review X, 10(4), 041042. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.041042

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1314493024072863744

Gaisbauer, F., Olbrich, E., & Banisch, S. (2020). Dynamics of opinion expression. Physical Review E, 102(4), 042303. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.102.042303

Hurst, D., & Murphy, K. (2020, June 22). Trump’s misleading information enables China to sow discord among allies, research finds. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/23/trumps-misleading-information-enables-china-to-sow-discord-among-allies-research-finds

Ecker, U. K. H., Butler, L. H., Cook, J., Hurlstone, M. J., Kurz, T., & Lewandowsky, S. (2020). Using the COVID-19 economic crisis to frame climate change as a secondary issue reduces mitigation support. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 101464. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101464

Aristotle's definition of rhetoric likens the notion of public speaking to persuasion. When addressing an issue of concern, using all available means of persuasion at one's disposal aids in constructing a sound argument.

From the intro to Mary Astell's section: "For Astell, women's rhetoric should focus on the art of conversation... This is women's proper rhetorical sphere, different from but in no way inferior to the public sphere in which men use oratory" (845).

In what ways does this new focus on women's public oratory affect Astell's insistence on private, domestic, and/or conversational discourse as sites of rhetorical power? Especially as we consider this part from Mary Beard's lecture: "In the early fourth century BC Aristophanes devoted a whole comedy to the ‘hilarious’ fantasy that women might take over running the state. Part of the joke was that women couldn’t speak properly in public – or rather, they couldn’t adapt their private speech (which in this case was largely fixated on sex) to the lofty idiom of male politics."